What this is
A news desk for the restoration industry. Machines do the reading. You get the signal and a straight take on what it means for a shop.
Where it comes from
Once a week, on Tuesday morning, an automated sweep reads the restoration trade press, the coverage-law blogs, the carrier and P&C press, and a map of roughly a hundred web angles: Xactimate pricing, PE deals, OSHA moves, state licensing, storm outlooks, software launches. A relevance gate throws out the noise. What survives gets read in full, merged with every other outlet reporting the same thing, and written up as a story: what happened, why it matters to a shop, where it came from, and how it fits the thread the desk has been tracking.
How to read a story
- The line under the headline
- One sentence that tells you whether the rest is worth your next two minutes. It is the same line you see in the feed, in search, and when someone shares the link.
- What happened
- The facts, in the desk's own words, with the numbers that matter kept in.
- Why it matters
- The operator read: what this does to a job, a claim, a payroll, or a pipeline. If you only read one section, read this one.
- The read
- A short editorial take that ends on what you do about it. It appears when the desk has one worth your time and stays off the page when it does not.
- Sources and sourcing
- Every outlet the story was built from, dated, with a plain note on what kind of source it is: trade press, a court, a regulator, a vendor's own announcement. The confidence label sits with them, because that is what it is a judgment about. Low confidence means verify it before you act on it.
- How we got here
- The storyline behind the story: every earlier piece the desk filed on the same thread, in date order, ending on the one you are reading. It appears once there is a real history to show. On a newer thread you get the "what changed" line on its own instead, under that heading.
- Section and date
- The topic the story files under and the brief it ran in. Both are links, so you can read the whole category or the whole edition.
Want the desk to dig into something?
Start with the plain-English explainers: what O&P is, how TPA program work trades margin for volume, what an AOB does, and how the desk rates stories.
Use the Suggest a story button in the top bar. Tell it what you're chasing (a carrier move, a rule change, a platform, a deal) and the desk searches everything it tracks, logs the request, and works it into a future brief when the reporting is there.
Who is behind it
The Restoration HQ is an AXIOM intelligence product, built and read by operators. The sweep, the relevance gate, the writeups, and the site are software. Editors are responsible for source review and approval before publication. Source-map size is not a receipt that every source was reached on a particular run.
What the desk has riding on this
One thing here is not neutral and you should have it up front. Jake Shelton edits The Restoration HQ, and he also builds AXIOM, AI estimating software for restoration contractors. This desk reports on estimating software, AI in claims, and the platforms AXIOM sells against, so the person running it has money riding on how that market turns out. Nothing here is sponsored and no one pays for coverage, but a stake is a stake. Every story links to its sources so you can check the reporting against the original. When you read this desk on estimating software, read it the way you would read anything written by someone in the business.